This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

January 28, 2016 :: Proponents of turning half of Los Angeles’ public schools into
privately run charter schools in five years have a brazen new strategy.
After running into obstacles last fall at the locally elected school
board overseeing America’s second-largest school district, they’re looking at capturing the mayor's office in 2017.

Steve Barr, who helped create the Green Dot Charter Schools group and has been involved in numerous controversial efforts
to privatize the L.A. school system, has told local newspapers he is
exploring a mayoral run due to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s hands-off approach
to education.

“I’ve talked to at least a half-dozen people who
will tell you he won’t get involved because it’s too controversial,”
Barr told the Los Angeles Times, which reported that Barr,
“wants to enter the race but will only do so if he can see a path to
building a campaign with adequate political and financial backing.”

Some
of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires, such as Los Angeles’ Eli Broad
and the Walton Family Foundation, have eyed Los Angeles as a major
target for privatizing traditional public schools in the next five
years. Broad has floated a $490 million plan to transform the district with 4.5 million students (!), and Walton—funded by Walmart profits—have pledged spending $1 billion from 2016 to 2020 to expand charter schools in 15 cities, including Los Angeles.

Other
California technology entrepreneurs—such as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—have also pledged multi-millions to
expand charters. They are no longer political newcomers, having been
involved in both successful and unsuccessful charter-related campaigns
in recent years. In other words, it’s likely that Barr’s campaign would
find no shortage of major donors or “independent” backers.

The
push to privatize L.A. schools has become increasingly politicized in
recent years, with local school board elections becoming proxy battles
for pro- and anti-charter sides. When privatizers ran into obstacles at
the L.A. school board, they focused on other high-ranking posts, such as
trying to influence the choice of the next city superintendent of
schools.

“The concept amazes and angers me,” board member Scott Schmerelson said
last fall about Broad’s proposal. “Far from being in the best interest
of children, it is an insult to teaching and administrative
professionals, an attack on democratic, transparent and inclusive public
school governance and negates accountability to taxpayers.”

Barr’s would-be candidacy comes after years of trying to pressure the city school board to take pro-charter positions, including
trying to create a parallel board of parents from charter schools as
competitor to the traditional PTA, or parent teachers association.

A mayoral campaign would be his—and the privatizers—most brazen move yet.

¿Brazen? There's an interesting word!

LAUSD has 4.5 million students? Really?? So much for declining enrollment! (LAUSD has 732,833 students, including adult ed.)

Peter Rabbit's father famously advised Peter that if he had nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all.

Frank Sinatra once told the press, referring to a individual whom he detested, that if they ever wanted to write something libelous or scanadalous about the person, they should feel free to attribute it to him.

The implication that Barr and the rest of the privatizer/$chool ®eform community act in concert mistakes that Barr is capable of being a team player or even a quiet conspirator. History teaches us otherwise - Barr is a self-promoting loose cannon on any and every deck - and because of that he and Donald Trump are dangerous.

Barr has “talked to at least a half-dozen people..." My guess is that they were all reporters. (The photo of Barr in the LATimes article cited above is a selfie - need I say more?)